Adobe Connect has been at the forefront of enabling impactful web collaboration for over fourteen years. Helping geographically dispersed teams, knowledge workers and educators spread information, gain new skills and complete complex tasks are core to what drives us to advance the product.

A key element to what has made Adobe Connect truly a best in class web conferencing solution has always been the ease of access associated with entering its environments. With the release of Adobe Connect 9.7 we are moving forward on this yet again with an increased focus on experiences free of browser based plug-ins and sustaining our momentum towards the adoption web standards within the product.

A Powerful Independent Application

In this release, all users will now experience a new standalone application that installs independently from the Adobe Flash Player, and outside of the Adobe Flash Player directory structure.

The new Adobe Connect application will fully remove the need for a web browser to join meetings and replaces the current Add-in experience.

Users will now be presented with an event entrance process within the Adobe Connect application that looks similar to what is depicted to the right:

The Adobe Connect application will let you easily rejoin recent meetings, or save frequently used meeting rooms as favorites for seamless immediate access. The new Adobe Connect application is ready for download today and can be found here:

This release also provides increased levels of control for enterprise system administrators. Adobe Connect 9.7 will include a new MSI installer for organizations that require the ability to uniformly manage the distribution of their corporation’s approved applications, and will also support both roaming and local profiles to provide better compatibility for virtualized environments.

While a new independent application experience will be an option for all users, those who have the Flash Player fully enabled in their browser will continue to be able to access Adobe Connect rooms without further downloads of an application.

Improved Browser and Audio Diagnostic Capabilities

The release of Adobe Connect 9.7 brings with it dramatically improved browser diagnostic capabilities, and gives users the ability to pre-install the new application before their meeting.

Meeting hosts now have the ability, well before an event begins, to encourage users who are encountering difficulties with the Flash Player to choose the ‘Install Adobe Connect’ option instead.

In addition to making improvements around meeting entry diagnostics, Adobe Connect 9.7 brings with it more seamless ways to configure audio profiles in advance of a meeting. For users leveraging Adobe Connect’s built-in Voice-over-IP (VoIP) features, the new test page also provides the ability to ensure their microphones and speakers are pre-configured before a meeting begins.

New HTML5 Administration within Adobe Connect Central

Connect Central is the powerful administrative back-end of Adobe Connect and in the 9.7 release we will move further towards widely accepted web standards by updating several of its key interfaces to HTML5. Our product team examined and analyzed the most prevalent workflows in Connect Central and is in the process of redesigning them using components developed exclusively with HTML5.

The new interface will be redesigned with a focus on up-leveling the discoverability of key features amongst end users. The four-tab structure makes finding and navigating between meetings, trainings, recordings and training catalogs more seamless than ever. Ultimately this redesign will offer greater access to these capabilities across browsers and devices.

Adobe Connect 9.7 expands on our product’s ease of access for both meetings and administration. Over the coming months we will steadily innovate on these themes through continued movement towards web standards and we are eager to share more news of these exciting features with our users soon.

Customers can expect the rollout of Adobe Connect 9.7 to begin in late October, 2017. If you are a current hosted customer of Adobe Connect you can check exactly when your account will be updated by navigating here.

For additional information about the release of Adobe Connect 9.7, including bug resolutions, be sure to explore the Release Notes.

Jacob Rosen

Jake is a Product Marketer for Adobe Connect and attended Georgetown University's McDonough School of Business. He is fascinated by all forms of digital media especially those relating to marketing, advertising, and collaboration. When not in the office you can find him cycling, jogging, cooking, or watching Portlandia.